I´m writing these lines from Barajas airport, getting ready to fly back to Dublin after a two-week holiday in Spain.
I´m coming back tired, but also happy: it´s been time really well spent. The holidays have been slightly chaotic, having to change plans a couple of times, but in the end, it has all turned out really well.
And the best part, no doubt, has been meeting Mar, the first baby of my family´s next generation, in person, in a place where the memory of her great-grandparents Ángel and Mari Carmen is always very present.
One more generation... I often have a feeling I find very interesting when I meet with friends, or even my siblings: that it seems time hasn´t passed and we are the same as always... Until we look at our children, at the next generation, and then we realise!
As usual, here are a few quotes to reflect on this topic:
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell
We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.
Gloria Steinem
What one generation sees as a luxury, the next sees as a necessity.
Anthony Crosland
And one that I found very funny:
From the earliest time, the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was, they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture. - W. Somerset Maugham
As it´s already tradition in this blog, I´m writing my vacation post from my happy place, where I´ve been very lucky to return once again this summer (you can read articles from previous years here and here).
(Photo taken today at sunset, from the "rock-house" where I used to play so often as a child.)
Once again, the old and the new get intertwined as I reacquaint myself with certain places and people: memories living alongside the here and now, creating a feeling of continuity. In a way, it´s always the same, but at the same time, it´s never the same.
Heraclitus said that you cannot swim twice in the same river, because neither you nor the river will be the same, with everything being in constant change. And this other quote goes along the same lines:
You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person.
Mahmud Darwish
I think this is a good reminder of the fact that we all change over time (whether we like it or not), and that we must give ourselves (and others) permission to grow, learn and evolve as a person, each of us in our own style and at our own pace, even if that implies not fulfilling certain expectations (I will tell you about "growth guilt" later on, in a future article).
But I also have to say that, similarly to what happens with certain places, even though people progressively change, there´s a certain continuity to them that stays over the years. A good analogy that can help with understanding this is a tree: a cherry tree can grow very tall or stay small; it can become quite leafy or barely have leaves, depending on different factors like the weather, sunlight, water, soil nutrients... But what it´s never ever going to do is become a pine tree, an oak tree or a palm tree.
Similarly, each person has a certain way to be, to show up,, which of course can mature and stabilise over time, but, save for cases like serious trauma and the like, broadly speaking, it´s going to continue the same. Our brain finds it really difficult to change, and it does so very slowly, bit by bit; that´s why it´s so important to have tools to help us make the most of that continuity (instead of fighting against it) and progressively become the best version of ourselves.
What about you? What particular places and people do you find simultaneously familiar and different?
Today, July 26th, is Saint Joachim and Saint Anne´s Day, and many countries with a Catholic tradition celebrate Grandparents´ Day (Saint Joachim and Saint Anne were the Virgin Mary´s parents, and therefore, baby Jesus´s grandparents).
(Willowtree figurines that we once upon a time gifted to my parents and in-laws)
What a special relationship, that of grandparents with their grandchildren! A bridge between generations.
I got to meet three of my four grandparents; today they´ve been top of mind for me. And my daughters, thankfully, have met their four grandparents, and have been able to spend time with them over many summers and Christmases. I will always remember my father playing with Irene, my eldest daughter, shen she was about two years old: on the floor, building towers of megablocks! I don´t remember ever seeing him sitting on the floor playing with us. But that´s exactly what people say: the joy of having grandchildren is totally different to that of having children. Children are for you to educate; grandchildren, for you to enjoy.
Now it´s my brother and sister-in-law´s turn to enjoy being grandparents, and I have to say I´ve never seen them happier. I also hope to become a grandmother someday (though let´s make it clear that there´s no rush at all, OK girls? Let me repeat that: NO RUSH), so that, when the moment comes, I can enjoy that tender feeling and that complicity with my grandchildren.
What about you? What do you remember about your grandparents? Do you agree with these phrases?
A baby has a way of making a man out of his father and a boy out of his grandfather.
Angie Papadakis
Grandparents are the best kind of grownups.
(Anonymoous)
There is nothing like grandchildren in your arms to put a smile on your face, a lump in your throat and a warm feel in your heart.
Last week, during an Enneagram class, we had a really interesting conversation about the relationship each of us has with the concept of power.
What thoughts cross your mind when you hear the word "power"?
We often associate it with negative ideas, don´t we? Oppression, abusiveness, forcing others to obey... And as a result, we may develop the belief that power is something bad, something we shouldn´t have, or seek.
But it doesn´t have to be like that.
The truth is, power is just the capacity to produce a result (thanks Mario for that definition), that is, to move things forward the way we want.
Thankfully, we all have the power to achieven things in life, even though sometimes we don´t know how to do it, or where to begin. We have the power to change, and by changing ourselves, we change our circumstances and influence our environment.
(Artefact seen at the S. S. Nomadic steam ship, next to the Titanic museum in Belfast. It was used to control the amount of power used to make the ship move forward or turn.
Now, this is not something that happens magically or overnight: changing requires work and conscious effort; it requires time, paatience and perseverance. And above all, it requires something that we may find quite difficult: leaving all excuses aside and taking charge of our life, once and for all.
Today I was reminded of a phrase that says: "what you´re not changing, you´re choosing" (thanks, Orla! According to Google, this quote is by Laurie Buchanan). A bit radical, isn´t it? But very true.
Even more radical is this other idea by Erica Jong, from which I was familiar with the last sentence, but not the whole paragraph:
No one to blame! That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated. How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right. You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Oh, how easy it is for us sometimes to blame others, or life, for our circumstances, without acknowledging how we contributed to creating that situation. The good news is that, once we break the habit of blaming others, we also break the habit of feeling at their mercy, and we recover the power over our own lifeeven though it initially feels uncomfortable. This is also a task that requires effort and conscious intention, and more importantly, a lot of self-compassion; for once we realise how we got to the point where we are ,and we stop blaming others for it, what we often do is blame ourselves. And that, instead of helping us, can be paralysing and bring us down even more.
But, as a good friend once said to me (thanks, Hernán): don´t look at it in terms of blame and guilt, but in terms of responsibility. You came this far by doing your best with the information and resources that you had at each moment. Now that you know a little bit more, it´s up to you to make better decisions and acquire better resources that take you (or at least get you closer) to the results you want.
the moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.
Hal Elrod
Now that you know it, are you willing to start using your power, without excuses and leaving guilt to one side? If you´d like to acquire resources that help you to achieve what you´re looking for, have a look at my services page.
Today, reviewing my Google notes, I found this quote I wrote down some time ago with the intention of sharing it in the blog:
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William George Ward
What do you think? It´s a good reminder of the different attitudes we can adopt when facing problems in life:
We can play the victim and complain about what´s happening to us (but without doing anything to change it)...
We can cave in, and naively hope that things will get better by themselves...
Or we can take action, and aim to make the best out of the situation.
This also reminds me of a book I read years ago (which I later donated during one of my decluttering sprees, something I regret), titled Who moved my cheese?, by Spencer Johnson.
Through telling us a story about some little mice and a maze, the author highlights the importance of not becoming too comfortable assuming "the cheese" (= whatever we desire in life) will always be there. Instead, he encourages us to stay alert so as to detect when change is coming, knowing that it´s natural for some fears to appear as we don´t know how the change will affect us, and to try and adapt to it quickly, because being open to change (= believing the change is going benefit us) as opposed to resisting it (= believing it´s going to damage us) can bring us very positive results and valuable learnings.
How easy is the theory, isn´t it? "Don´t be afraid and embrace change; it will turn out well for sure". The practice is an entirely different thing: fears don´t dissolve magically just by the mere fact that we know they´re there. But, using the appropriate tools and doing the necessary work, we can get to understand and manage our fears much better, so that we can take ownership of our own decisions.
Are you currently going through, or do you think you may soon be going through, a period of change? I am; we could say that at this moment, my cheese is moving. Or rather, the wind is changing, and I´m trying to find the best way to adjust my sails...
(Double page photo of one of the Junior Woodchucks books my sisters and I used to read as kids, featuring a fabulous pirate ship. Can you tell that I have zero experience in sailing? I may have to ask my friends Seán and Dee for a crash course on the basics.)
Today´s article begins with these words in Latin: premeditatio malorum, which we could translate as "pre-studying future evils".
And even though it sounds like a joke (to Spanish-speaking people, at least), like those fake Latin phrases we used to read in Asterix comic books, it turns out it´s a real thing, an expression from centuries ago. It´s a technique used by the ancient Stoic philosophers; I learned it in a Stoicism training course by Autognosis (thanks, Luis!)
(Flowers drawn by Eva, the artist in our family, on our kitchen whiteboard.)
This week, a few things happened around me that threw me off in a rather big way; things that made me consider situations I wouldn´t even have thought of until recently. And thinking about them, without noticing, I saw myself in the worst-case scenario. Which is exactly what this exercise is about: allowing ourselves a certain amount of time to recreate that situation we´re scared to see happening.
But not in a masochistic way, with the intention of suffering more, but, paradoxically, in order to suffer less. When we become worried about the future, we know only too well that just telling our mind not to worry doesn´t work at all; we´re going to worry anyway. So, what this technique proposes is not to run away from that thought, or to try and cover it, but to give it a chance to surface. This way, by visualising and imagining the worst-case scenario as if it were actually happening, we let ourselves integrate it, process it, and accept more peacefully the possibility (even if remote) of it happening.
Moreover, this technique can also help us to be better prepared for whatever may happen, or even to reduce the probability of it happening, if there are things in our power to try and avoid it. This is what I did as well, without noticing: I went what would I do in this situation? How would I manage? What resources would I have? And from there, I made a number of hypothetical decisions that provided me with a clearer picture of that imaginary future, which no longer looked that terrible.
At the end of the day, it´s all about "decatrastophizing"that future threat by bringing it down to earth, giving it a shape and coming up with an action plan that puts our mind at ease, as we position ourselves at the helm as opposed to staying adrift.
For best results, ideally, this exercise should be done in writing, reserving a reasonable amount of time (not too long) to get yourself in the situation, imagine all the details and observe the thoughts and emotions that start bubbling up. What options do you have?
You can write it all in three separate colunns:
Situation: your fear, the worst possible scenario.
Prevention: what is under your control to prevent this issue from happening?
Management: if it ends up happening, what is under your control to solve or mitigate the issue?
This way, by facing the threat and reflecting on it, anxiety paradoxically decreases instead of increasing. Because we go from being preoccupied about the problem to being occupied with building the solution. And on top of that, as it´s all written down, once the exercise is over, our mind can free itself up from this topic and focus again on other things.
As a final note, let´s all remember that we are stronger than we think. And as Marcus Aurelius, one of the great Stoic philosophers, once said:
Do not worry about the future. You will face it with the same weapons with which you face the present.
Do you like famous phrases and quotes? If you´ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I do like them; I often include some in my articles, though I try not to overdo it.
Today, as I started my computer, Google showed me a familiar quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson :
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Beautiful, isn´t it? I looked up more quotes from the same author, and found loads; here´s my selection.
(Photo taken this weekend, on our visit to Northern Ireland with Merche, Nacho and Miguel. Thanks, guys!)
People do not seem to realise that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
And one that I found surprising:
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
It´s the beginning of another week, and I imagine it like a blank sheet of paper to fill in day by day, if possible, in nice and neat handwriting.
Sometimes, we go through stages where there´s barely time for anything else but whatever is indispensable each day. And that´s OK, it´s what needs to be done.
But be careful, or you might get stuck there for much longer than you need to...
I found this quote in a book I keep at home; I haven´t been able to identify the author:
Don´t spend so long concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other that you forget to look where you are going.
(Photo taken approximately a year ago, walking down from the Alhambra towards Granada´s city centre.)
In other words: take your eyes off the path every now and then, look up, and check whether you´re really going in the direction that you want.
Setting a destination will help you to take firmer and better-aimed steps. And stopping to sharpen the saw every now and then will give you the clarity and tools that you need to keep making progress.
So, tell me, where are you going? And what steps are you taking this week to get closer to your destination?
Once again, the weekend has gone by really quickly,, and I´m left with the feeling that I haven´t done half of the things I would have liked. Which probably means I had planned roughly twice as many things as I can realistically fit into a weekend.
Does this happen to you as well? It´s quite normal; us humans are awful at estimating the time it takes us to complete a task or project (more on this topic here).
For me, a common consequence of not being realistic with my time is that I often end up resting and sleeping less, as there are things I don´t want to leave undone, even when the day is coming to an end. And so, without noticing, I get myself into a vicious cycle of lack of sleep that only brings about more problems...
This week I caught myself in that cycle again. And I´m the only one who can get me out of it.
Sometimes we feel that we have no other choice but to fill our days with tasks and keep going until we drop from exhaustion.. Or maybe we´re already exhausted, but we don´t listen to our body. For how much longer? Do we have to wait until life gives us a fright before we start taking care of ourselves?
The good news is that life (or, rather, our body) sends us signals, it shows us when the pace we´re going at is no longer sustainable. The key is learning to listen, so that, once those signals start to appear, we can notice them and take action.
But the thing is, in order to listen to ourselves, first we need to create a little bit of silence. And being continuously surrounded by noise and distractions, as it happens nowadays, doesn´t help with that at all. We need to make a conscious effort to "disconnect" from the outside for a little while, and get the chance to connect with our inner side to take stock of how we´re really feeling.
This reminds me of two things: first, the opening sentence in Desiderata: "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence"... If this was already true approximately a century ago, there´s no doubt it´s truer now than ever.
And second, this quote I thought I had already shared, but apparently hadn´t:
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
Anne Lamot
And if instead of a few minutes it´s a few hours, or days, or even weeks, that´s even better.
(Poster seen in an Avoca shop: "offline is the new luxury". This phrase would deserve its own full article; maybe one day I´ll write it.)
Now, what about you? Do you need to press the reset button?
As you already know, every once in a while, I like to write on this blog about a word or expression I find particularly accurate in English (or Spanish) and which I think loses strength and meaning when translated into Spanish (or English, depending on the case).
Today, we´re adding one more word to our list of untranslatables ; an English word that´s very widely used, and I´d say not only among English-speaking folks: workout. The dictionary translates it as "ejercicio" (exercise) or "entrenamiento" (training), but those two words, in my opinion, are a bit vague and generic, while workout conveys something a lot more tangible: each specific training session, each period of time dedicated to exercising. And that involves a certain amount of work, which is implicit in the word itself, as it derives from the verb -to work.
(Photo of a sign in my office building, encouraging people to take the stairs instead of the elevator: "Burn calories, not electricity. Take the stairs.")
Indeed, exercising takes effort, and not only in the sense of being physically tiring (which, once you show up and get started, is probably not that big of a deal). The hardest part is staying consistent, and keeping up the progress without waiting to feel like doing it, because, let´s be realistic, you´re almost never going to feel like doing it... (By the way, in case you didn´t know, that´s completely normal; elite athletes don´t feel like going out for a run every day either, and they do it anyway. That´s why it´s so important to create routines to make things easier for ourselves and help us achieve our goals).
The good news is that all that work done over the weeks, months, and years finally has its rewards: when we work out regularly, we keep ourselves in better shape, we feel better, and are able do more things. In other words, our quality of life improves.
So, what if we could apply the same reasoning to other types of exercise, not only physical?
This all came up because I heard a phrase the other day that I believe is worth sharing. I´m not sure whether it´s original from the person I heard it from, a coach called Alexias Anderson; it was part of a talk on Adaptive Intelligence (a key topic given the times we´re living in, accelerated and ever changing, so I´m I´ll be posting more about this for sure):
Every unfamiliar experience is a workout.
I really like the parallel this lady draws here: in the same way exercise is uncomfortable and tiring for your body, but beneficial in the long term, having to figure things out in an unfamiliar environment is uncomfortable and tiring for our brain, but also beneficial in the longt term. It allows the brain to learn to adapt to different situations, become more flexible, and develop a wider repertoire of strategies, responses, and actions depending on the scenario.
And, as it is the case with physical exercise, the key is to do it often, even if it´s in small doses. There´s no need to do anything too radical, the idea is to progressively get exposed to experiencies and activities where our auto-pilot is of no use, so we need to figure things out in order to keep going. It may be something as simple as using a different route to get back home (with no Google Maps!), starting a new hobby or learning a new skill that has very little to do with what we´re naturally good at.
A silly example I can think of is related to the songs we sing in our workplace choir: I´m usually in the soprano group, but lately we´ve been having very low attendance, so for some of the songs, I´ve had to move to the Alto line... It´s astounding how much extra energy it takes me to learn these new versions of the songs; I find it super hard.
But as we said before, the good news is that all this extra energy expense has its rewards, and in my opinion, the reward is twofold. On the one hand, by intentionally putting ourselves in situations that are somewhat uncomfortable, we progressively increase our tolerance to discomfort, and this can give us a lot of freedom, and also open up options in our daily life. And on the other hand, when life inevitably brings us big moments of change with the capacity to shake our world and knock us out of place, we will be a lot better prepared, with resources to better weather the storm and even take advantage of the circumstances.
What do you think of this idea? In which ways do you give your body, and your mind, a workout?
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